1969 ‘La Fiancée du pirate’ Directed by Nelly Kaplan
Treated as an outcast and exploited by the villagers of a small town, a young woman liberates herself through sex, which she uses as a tool of economic gain and an instrument of revenge against those who have wronged her.
Frække Marie, Byslinkan, Moneten für's Kätzchen, Dirty Mary, No culpes a María, A Noiva do Pirata, Alla bella Serafina piaceva far l'amore sera e mattina, A kalóz menyasszonya, Narzeczona pirata, Невеста пирата, The Pirate's Fiancée, Pirāta līgava
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love this as a film about a sex worker refusing to allow herself to become ostracized and relegated to the margins by a society that refuses to allow her to exist under capitalism. so fucking cool. this is my first nelly kaplan and i'm so excited to dig further into her work!! her style feels similar to buñuel (bits reminded me of DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID, particularly the french countryside setting) but with some of the feminist pandemonium reminiscent of věra chytilová and agnès varda. and this is the first dramatic role i've seen bernadette lafont in (i'm more accustomed to her as a high-energy comedic performer) and she brings a perfect combination of sadness and resilience and charm to this…
👏ex👏pose👏them👏!!! actually there are some complicated causes and consequences to marie (bernadette lafont) commodifying her trauma — one of her molestors is a woman, the wives of sleazy men suffer. but this is a movie that ends triumphantly for the sex worker protagonist. in nelly kaplan’s own words, “she’s a witch who doesn’t let herself be burned.”
Imagine if Dogville was funny + made by a lady - that's this movie and its great.
Introduced by #basedgod Laura Mulvey.
Atheistic and anti-bourgeois in its air, having that trenchant quality of Buñuel and Truffautian humourous oddity, Kaplan's debut feature exhibits an effectual satire on human greed, moral depravity, parochial and sexist attitudes existing in a patriarchal society. Being a zany account of provocative reprisal, "A Very Curious Girl" emphasizes itself as a witty and cynical study of the hypocrisy of a clerical and parish-pump community and how it collectively exploits and ostracizes a woman or individuals in general.
In all honesty, an intoxicatingly and convincingly feminist tale- the way Marie puzzles, disgraces, teases, and unmasks those pretender asswipes are truly enjoyable- so, don't mess with her; Lafont slayed and I loved it.
For her scandalous directorial debut, Nelly Kaplan waged a battle against the patriarchy—and French censors!—with her anarchic heroine, envisioned as a modern-day witch. Toppling provincial hypocrisies with glee, Bernadette Lafont’s defiant outcast reclaims her autonomy by weaponizing her sexuality.
Now streaming here.
Some spoilers!
Recently nora wrote a very compelling review of this film where she compared it to Buñuel's adaptation of Diary of a Chambermaid and the work of Agnès Varda. Since Diary of a Chambermaid is my favorite Buñuel film (and I love Buñuel) and Varda is another director who I think is excellent I was even more motivated to check out this film that was already on my radar. I think nora's points of comparison are super accurate; like Chambermaid this is a story occupied with the hypocrisies of life in a small town in the French countryside (and like most Buñuel work it is a film critical of Catholic institutions and is populated by lecherous men) and Varda's…
It is perfect pitched to Lafont's presence, both self-aware of her place on New Wave imagination and willing to let her loose out of any punishing boundaries. She is predictably great and Kaplan gets a lot of the distance between her and the rural France she sets around her. An impressive exploration of politics as a matter of being.
A feminist assertion of sexual agency with the garage-bound aesthetics of a kids’ puppet show, A Very Curious Girl sets itself in a micro-culture that is both practically absurd and politically truthful. Director Nelly Kaplan creates a world of extreme artificiality and skewed governance, a cartoon illustration of rural France with bright pops of false propriety and secret lust. (It’s hard to imagine Wes Anderson or Yorgos Lanthimos constructing their little societies without this example.)
The plot, as it were: Young Marie (Bernadette Lafont) has spent her adolescence being leered at and slavered over by the men of her conservative village. After her mother dies, Marie gets the entrepreneurial bug and starts charging for sex. Before long there’s not a…
Why do men in old movies always kiss like this? The double-shoulder-grab into the face-mash. In this case, the guys are brutes, but this is also how Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart kiss. Who taught them? A. O. Scott has nothing to say about the nature of kissing, he just talks about emotional impacts. www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/magazine/a-brief-history-of-kissing-in-movies.html
Ok, I found this one on Slate and it has a pretty good description of kissing.
slate.com/culture/2016/02/how-pop-culture-kissing-has-evolved-from-silent-movies-to-today.html
I guess it is a combination of navigating the codes to not show "excessive and lustful kissing" and the attempt to create a heightened image of romance. That makes me feel better. But you just know that some guys learned kissing tips from these movies and thought they were being romantic smashing their faces into some poor girls' faces.
